According to PC Gamer the Steam Lunar New Year sale is coming in 2019, and will be starting in early February.
Valve has sent out a reminder to developers this week. It said: “This is a reminder that another Steam Sale Event is coming up! The Steam Lunar New Year Sale will run in early February. Full details on the start and end time can be found on the Sale Approval tool, which you can access from the Steamworks home page under the “Apps & Packages” dropdown. If you haven’t entered discounts for the Lunar New Year Sale yet, this is a good opportunity to do so.
“All games are invited to participate in the sale event, and Lunar New Year discounts will not count towards the normal 8-week discount cooldown.
“Please remember that it is not possible to submit a discount within 30 days of the following: Releasing a game for the first time at full price OR the end of new release launch discount OR a price increase. This limitation applies to all discounts, including seasonal sale events.
“Please note that unlike the Autumn and Winter sale events, this sale will NOT interrupt the normal storefront or impact launch visibility for new releases. It is just fine to release a new game during the sale event.”
Valve has been saying for a pretty long time now that it wants to redesign Steam’s classic look. We’ve seen supposed leaks of the images in the past, but nothing concrete from the company itself.
A recent blog post celebrating the company’s success in 2018 has confirmed that there is a redesign in the works, and it looks like it’s got some serious thought going into it.
Posting on Steam Community, Valve shared the following plans for 2019:
“While we feel like we’ve accomplished a lot in 2018, there’s still a ton more work to do, features to build, and hard problems to solve. Here’s a sneak peek at a few of the more notable things we plan to ship this year:
- Store Discoverability: We’re working on a new recommendation engine powered by machine-learning, that can match players to games based on their individual tastes. Algorithms are only a part of our discoverability solution, however, so we’re building more broadcasting and curating features and are constantly assessing the overall design of the store.
- Steam China: We’ve partnered with Perfect World to bring Steam onshore into China. We’ll reveal more details about this in the coming months.
- Steam Library Update: Some long awaited changes to the Steam Client will ship, including a reworked Steam Library, built on top of the technology we shipped in Steam Chat.
- New Events System: We’re upgrading the events system in the Steam Community, enabling you to highlight interesting activities in your games like tournaments, streams, or weekly challenges.
- Steam TV: We’re working on expanding Steam TV beyond just broadcasting specific tournaments and special events, in order to support all games.
- Steam Chat: We’re going to ship a new Steam Chat mobile app, so you can share your favorite GIFs with your friends while on the go.
- Steam Trust: The technology behind Trusted Matchmaking on CS:GO is getting an upgrade and will become a full Steam feature that will be available to all games. This means you’ll have more information that you can use to help determine how likely a player is a cheater or not.
- Steam PC Cafe Program: We are going to officially ship a new PC Cafe Program so that players can have a good experience using Steam in hundreds of thousands of PC Cafes Worldwide.”
Sounds pretty interesting!
In 2018, SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik tweeted a supposed slide from a Valve presentation that apparently took place back in January of that year.
Alongside the image he added: “Just remembered that Valve’s been working on a Steam redesign for years now. Here’s a picture from a presentation in January. It certainly doesn’t look like the SteamU leak from 2 years ago.”
Check out the images in the tweet below!
Just remembered that Valve’s been working on a Steam redesign for years now. Here’s a picture from a presentation in January.
It certainly doesn’t look like the SteamU leak from 2 years ago: https://t.co/KjoRK8OnLA pic.twitter.com/2fG2acIIz8
— Pavel Djundik (@thexpaw) November 25, 2018
Here’s the slide where it came from pic.twitter.com/6Ewdku5gvF
— Pavel Djundik (@thexpaw) November 25, 2018
Probably comes out in January since they don’t have to update for XP and Vista
— Slayer (@SlayerSC23) November 25, 2018
The leaked screenshots were hoped to be mock-ups, with people on Twitter branding the new look as ugly.
Looks terrible, so hopefully not.
— Imperial Pringle (@ImperialPringle) November 25, 2018
What do you think about the potential new look for PC gaming? Do you prefer it to the current version of Steam, or should Valve give up on this pipe dream?
Words by Mel Ramsay
Featured Image Credit: Valve